Opposable Thumbs —

A video tour of Jumpgate Evolution

Jumpgate Evolution is a space-faring MMO with a deep love of action. Beautiful …

It's somewhat difficult to attend a meeting for a game in a genre that you couldn't really care less about, but Jumpgate Evolution was an impressive sight. It doesn't hurt that the game was being shown on a three-monitor setup in a private suite... the scale of the game is impressive.

Don't take my word for it though, I have a set of videos of Scott Brown, the President of NetDevil, giving you guys a personal demo of the game. I hope you enjoy.

The game seemed like an MMO by a team that really loves action games; there will be support for a large variety of joysticks, as well as missions that include PVP if you're into that sort of thing. Players can upgrade their ships with new weapons, buy new ships, and explore the game's large battlefields and environments. It was a game that seemed incredibly inviting, and I was promised that the title had a low death-penalty.

Dogfighting, or what little they were able to show, looked impressive; imagine something like EVE Online mixed with TIE Fighter and you have an idea about what to expect. We were promised a bunch of keys to give away when the closed beta begins, so we'll be sure to follow up and get as many of you guys playing as possible. This is certainly one we'll be keeping our eyes on.

Definitely really psyched about this - I've thought that an action-based space MMO should be doable for years, and it's the big thing that turned me off EVE (well, that and the massive learning curve, plus the required amount of time commitment to "stay in the game"). I've been following the development for ages, and I'm theoretically signed up for the beta when it happens, but some keys from Ars for guaranteed entry would go down a treat.

By the way, if you restrict them to US residents only, I may have to get upset.

Looks fairly pretty well inspired by Freespace, which can only be a good thing.

They made the controls seem quite easy to manipulate. Unfortunately one downside to making it action-oriented is that a good monitor setup like they use gives a big advantage for periphery. I can't afford 2 more 24" monitors and another beefy GPU in order to be competitive.

The real key to the game's success though will be how well they integrate a solid backstory and plot. Those put Freespace and Homeworld ahead of the pack like a decade ago. Dogfighting can definitely get to be a grind if the enemies aren't varied and the writers don't provide enough motivation to want to kill them.

What I'd really really like to see though is a lighthearted space game. Like where the enemies could be from Disco Planet and have lots of plaid and gold on their ships, or 17th-century scurvy "space pirates". You know, something spry with a Futurama-style wackiness

It sure looks like a re-hash of Jumpgate: TRI that came out something like 8 years ago. It was a fun game in the short to medium term but had virtually no depth to keep people interested. Are they doing anything to make the game more interesting past the first month I wonder?